


we are not alone in the dark with our demons.

by rockygetsrolling



Series: CEC Shorts [8]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Gotham Central
Genre: (also forgive me for not tagging every character there's so many and i'm tired), Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Good Brothers Being Good Brothers, Head Injury, Music, Past Child Abuse, audrey let me beat her boy whoops, bruce sings the beatles just so i can trigger jersey, jim and b said fuck abuser lives and i couldn't agree more, liberal use of google-translated irish gaelic, very light jimsarah romance because i'm a sucker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 05:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20633915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rockygetsrolling/pseuds/rockygetsrolling
Summary: Dev's father crosses the line. Luckily, Jim and Bruce are there to pick up the pieces.OR: Audrey enables me and Bruce sings "Eleanor Rigby."





	we are not alone in the dark with our demons.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [audreycritter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/gifts), [jerseydevious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/gifts).

> it's 1:38 am. it's time. my brain has transcended to the astral realm. behold, my magnum opus.

The day had been laced with hope from the get-go: three homicides have been wrapped up in the last week, the night before had been calm and still (for Gotham, anyway), and Damian had won first place in his school art contest on Wednesday. And when Jim had pulled his curtains open, he’d been pleasantly surprised to herald sunlight into his bedroom, the sky above as blue as a mockingbird’s song.

Sarah’s arms had wrapped around his waist and her lips had been on his shoulder, as if promising that the day would only get better.

That had been this morning.

Now, it’s almost two o’clock in the afternoon on a Friday in September, and Jim is sitting outside in front of a sweet little cafe in Chinatown, Bruce across from him and hunched over the table like he’s in pain of thinking too hard.

They’re both starting to get nervous.

Jim stares out into the street, analyzing the traffic passing by, just watching. Bruce, meanwhile, is checking his phone every ten seconds, his leg bouncing under the table in a way that Jim knows is gonna make him sore later on.

“You keep that up, you’re not gonna be able to put the suit on tonight,” he says casually, and Bruce’s leg stills.

“Where the hell is he?” 

Jim shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

Bruce looks around, his knee in the beginnings of another fit before Jim swats it gently with a rolled-up newspaper.

“Hey.”

“It’s a nervous tic, stop worrying. He’s fine, probably just got stuck in traffic.”

They both know it’s a lie. It hangs between them in the air, a drop of morning dew becoming too heavy for the leaf it rests on to support it. Soon it will fall and burst on the ground, scattering the shards of their patience across the spit-stained concrete below them.

But.

The waitress returns, a smile plastered on her face. “Ready here yet?”

Bruce offers her his gigawatt smile, toned down a tad for a more apologetic expression. “We’re still waiting on one more, if that’s alright.”

She gives a nod—her name tag reads Valerie—and smiles a bit wider. “No worries, just wave me down when you’re ready,” she chirps, then whirls around and bustles toward the other tables. The moment she’s gone, Bruce’s smile drops, and his face hardens like a stone on a mountaintop.

“Something’s _wrong_,” he hisses. “He’s _never_ late. It’s his superpower. He could have an hour of traffic against him and still be here ten minutes early.”

Jim laughs around the anxiety lodged in his chest. “First time for everything, right?”

Bruce turns his icy expression on Jim, and the laugh, already on slippery ground, falters and faceplants. 

“Jim,” Bruce says, and Jim knows that look, that’s the look he had on when Jim had told everyone about the very real possibility that he could die from a blood cancer, that’s the look he had on when Jason had limped into the cave last Tuesday bleeding from his mouth and an ugly snarl of barbed wire entangled around his leg, that’s the look he had on when Mary had come home from school with a fever of 103 degrees and a killing cough this past January.

“Jim, _where the fuck is he_.”

Jim stares back with what he hopes is a deadpan expression. “I don’t know.”

Bruce slumps back into his seat and casts his gaze back out to the throngs of people walking past them, his leg going at it again, and this time Jim doesn’t stop him. Maybe he should get a call in to Amara at the front desk to reschedule his meeting with Mayor Garcia—

A metal chair suddenly scrapes the ground, and Jim starts as Bruce rises, leaves three twenty-dollar bills on the table, and slips through a gap in the low-slung fence surrounding the outdoor dining area. A few people stare.

Jim does not; he follows him.

“B!” He catches up with Bruce’s long, purposeful stride (no small feat) and looks up into his brother’s dark gaze. “B, what—?”

“Just come with me.”

It’s _that_ voice. Jim knows far too well what that means. 

“Right,” he says stiffly, and they walk against the tide of living dewdrops around them toward Jim’s car.

=

Dev’s apartment is on the decidedly nicer side of town—certainly no penthouse, but by no means a studio apartment either. 

It’s mildly concerning that they’re even here, honestly. Dev lives a twenty-minute walk away from the cafe they were supposed to meet, just over the so-called border between Chinatown and the Upper West Side. 

Bruce is deathly silent in the passenger seat, staring upward at the building for a moment before climbing out of the car and up toward the elegant glass doors of the Princely Suites. 

Jim feels sick with worry; he follows hurridley.

“Can you offer me one word as to why we’re here?” he asks sharply.

“Something’s _wrong_.” 

Jim sighs from his nostrils in mild fury, but doesn’t press any further.

When Bruce Wayne strides into _anywhere_ looking like an angry bull charging a matador’s cape, it gets people’s attention. Such attention is doubled when the Head of Police is with him in any fashion, and this is no exception: the few residents and guests gathered in the lobby look up in simultaneous bewilderment and alarm.

Bruce ignores them. Jim tries his best.

The front desk attendant, Henrietta, God bless her, knows who they are, and she waves them close as they make a beeline for the elevator. “Boys, there’s an _issue_.”

“What kind of issue, exactly?” Jim breaks out of his path and leans over the front desk, Bruce paused a few paces behind him.

Henrietta looks frantic, her bespectacled brown eyes shifting. “Listen, you’re here to see Dr. Devabhaktuni, right?”

“When do we ever see anyone else,” Bruce growls, and Jim shoots him a glare that says _I know you’re scared but don’t take it out on her._

Henrietta, forever unflappable, pushes on. “Someone went up there not that long ago. He looked furious, and I heard him saying his name, like he was _cursing_ it or something.”

Jim feels his blood shock still and cold inside him. Sunlight pours warm on his back through the lobby’s huge windows.

“Henri? What did he look like, this other man?”

“Like Doc, but older. Stockier. Had that kind of bastard-y vibe to him, you feel me? And this _really_ ugly scar on his neck, like he got a shitty sunburn or something—”

That’s all she gets out of her mouth before both men break into a sprint out of the lobby, yelling at each other to take the stairs; at this point, the luxury of an elevator means nothing.

=

Jim doesn’t want to do it, but he does: he pulls his pistol from his ankle holster and makes sure it’s loaded. Bruce pretends not to notice.

Dev’s apartment is five paces down the hall. His door is closed, the pristine white paint job smeared with fresh black sneaker treads at the base.

“If he’s hurt a single _fucking_ hair on his head,” Bruce murmurs, “I’m making a special exception to the rule.”

Jim doesn’t reply; if he does, he’ll shout with fury, and he needs to keep it for now to use against whatever the door is holding back. 

Bruce knocks. “Dev?”

Silence.

Bruce knocks harder. “Dev? You there?”

There’s a crash inside, followed by a shout, and something slams against the door from the other side. They both scramble back, and Jim reholsters his gun: he really doesn’t want to shoot anyone, but he wants even less for whoever’s in there to get their hands on it in some horrible twist of fate.

They exchange glances.

“Kick the door down?” Bruce asks.

Jim shakes his head and pulls a paper clip from his pocket. Bruce snatches it, drops to the doorknob’s level, and starts the delicate process.

Something else is flung against the door, and Jim hunches over Bruce instinctually, like he’s ready to take the hit instead.

“Jesus H,” Bruce hisses as a voice shouts something again, this time louder, closer to the door.

The door is wrenched open, a vicious voice cutting the silent air of the hall, a voice that’s not Dev’s, and Jim sees a pair of dark hands appear—there’s dots of blood on the knuckles—

He moves all in one fluid, frightening second: his body straightens up and forward, his right fist swings, he shoves himself onto the human barricade in front of the door and slams it against the hardwood floor. The voice—it’s so angry, so _familiar_—gets louder, and Jim feels the heat and motion of flesh and blood under his palms, and for the first time, he _looks_.

It’s definitely not Dev.

Jim wants to spit in his eye.

“Get the _fuck_ off me!” Mr. Devabhaktuni rages, struggling to move under Jim’s weight—surprising, since Jim is wiry and slender compared to his enemy (yes, this man is unquestionably his enemy).

“Where is he.”

Bruce steps past the two of them and hustles into the apartment. “Dev!” 

Jim grabs his collar and pulls it dangerously tight. “Where. Is. He.”

Bruce comes out of the kitchen, his whole being frantic as he wheels down the hall, still yelling his brother’s name, then silence.

_He found him._

“Get _off me_, before I call the bleeding police—!”

Jim gets the evil satisfaction of looking him in the eyes and replying with the simple truth: “I _am_ the police.”

There’s silence and stillness for just a moment when Jim takes a short glance to his left, and he sees the dictionary lying open on the floor, its spine splintered by the impact of it hitting the door, he sees the spots of scarlet on the floor—

—and a hand with sandpaper skin flies up and slams him in the neck.

His mind flashes from where he is now—_Dev’s apartment, Dev is in danger_—to a dark night in October just a few years ago, before he even knew Dev—_his home, his kitchen, his table’s turned over and has bullet holes in it and he’s fighting for his life, he’s going to die if he doesn’t fight_—

So Jim rolls away, sucks in a breath, and rises to his feet to meet another fist, a fist that lands on his cheek and makes him taste iron.

“Fuckin’ American pigs.” 

The words burn the air, and Jim’s anger flares higher. He uses his place to shove his assailant forward, to pin him against the opposite wall and rain blows on him like the Holy Spirit rained the plagues on the Pharaoh: _make him ache make him sick make him shatter make him feel what he did to his son make him pay make him pay make him pay_

When Jim is done, the enemy’s body is wrecked just short of a hospital visit, just enough for it to hurt like hell as he limps back to his car and never fucking comes back.

“You wanna talk about pigs?” Jim grabs his collar and uses it to slam his head against the wall. “You wanna talk about pigs, you fucking shitstain? Fine. Let’s start with you. The lowest, muddiest slimebag of them all.”

Beady eyes burn him. “Watch what the _fuck_ you say to me, you sniveling Mick, I’m fucking military—”

“So am I, you’re a sorry excuse of it.” Another slam against the wall. “What did you do to him.”

“Fuck you.”

Jim punches him hard in the teeth, shoves him to the floor, and leaves him there, his whole body roaring with adrenaline and a fury so pure it could kill. 

He walks toward the bedroom, hoping to God that the damage isn’t horrible, that Dev is somehow, miraculously okay, and he peers inside.

His heart sinks like a stone.

Dev is on the floor at the foot of his bed, lying on his side; Bruce is pressing what looks like a shredded pillowcase against his temple, and the fabric is slowly turning an angry, mortal red. Bruce is saying Dev’s name, is holding his hand, is trying to get something out of him, but Dev is still and silent in a way that Jim remembers, that Jim understands so thoroughly it aches. 

His eyes are cold, vacant, lightless. 

It hurts to look at.

Jim wants to cry.

He crosses the thousands of miles of hardwood and sunlight—warm, safe, homey sunlight, _like that day by the sea_—and kneels in front of Dev’s empty face. His hand buries itself in Dev’s dark hair. He feels like Hector, watching Priam’s golden city crumble as his own eyelids fall shut amid the chaos of battle.

“Dev?”

Dev doesn’t answer. 

He’s alive, without a doubt, Jim can see and feel Dev’s body making the minute shifts that come with breathing, but he feels like he’s talking to a corpse.

“Holy fuck, _Dev_.”

Something—someone—shifts in the hallway.

Jim whirls around, already halfway to his feet, but Bruce beats him to it.

Jim watches, with a chest full of prideful rage, as his brother grabs the beast, slams him down to the floor, and pulls the bedroom door shut.

“Dev?” He tries again, almost in vain, and he feels like he’ll shatter with the force of his fury and sorrow. Dev isn’t home, he’s somewhere else, somewhere that’s safe and far away and can keep him safe from the monster that their brother the knight is taking his time destroying. Jim knows the feeling all too well.

He sucks in a sharp breath and gently places Dev’s head in his lap, leans down to press his face into Dev’s curls. “C’mon, little brother. C’mon, Devvie. You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

Nothing.

Jim squeezes his eyes shut against the growing flood of tears.

The door opens about seven minutes later, and Bruce stands in the doorway looking like Achilles, fresh from the battlefield. The fire is still smouldering in his eyes, there’s a bruise on his chin, and his knuckles are raw and red and bleeding.

His expression is like a stone on a mountaintop. There are tear tracks shining on his face. 

The sunlight is golden. Dust motes halo Bruce’s head.

“Is he okay?”

Jim looks up at him, and when he blinks, a single tear falls from his face. “No.”

Bruce inhales through his nose, exhales through his mouth, and gets on the floor beside Dev, holding him, his whole being wracked with sobs.

Jim sucks down his hysterics and calls the one person who always answers.

“Wayne residence, Mr. Penny—”

“Al,” Jim manages, “Al, we need you here.”

“Who’s we, Master James?”

“Dev. It’s Dev. He needs you. He needs help. Please.”

“What’s going on?”

JIm looks at the sad scene before him—the knight mourning the martyr, the beast almost slain—and makes a noise that’s almost a whimper.

“Dev’s apartment. Alfred, _please_.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes with Sergeant Essen and Dr. Thompkins.”

“Thank you,” he manages, and he hangs up before Alfred can say anything else.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce is saying, his voice like a lyre’s strings snapping. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry.”

Dev doesn’t answer. Dev does nothing.

The monster shifts in the hallway, and Jim rises to his feet, enters the hallway, and shuts the bedroom door.

As he stands over the body of the sniveling beast, he feels a familiar anger in his chest, the anger that rages on and on—_i didn’t deserve what you did to me, no one will ever deserve what you did to me, there is nothing in this world that can justify what you did to me._

“Anything else you wanna say, you shitstain?”

The beast has the audacity to speak: “Sod the fuck off.”

Jim does not. He stands over the fallen monster, no lance in hand, no sword, no shield but his love for his brother and his hatred for his enemy, and says what he wants to say.

“_Teigh tu fein le scian giobalch._”

Uncle Charlie would be proud if he could see this.

=

The next several hours pass in a stupefied blur. 

Alfred, Leslie, and Sarah all turn up at once: Sarah bags Dev’s father, her black-hole eyes and wine-dark hair reflecting her fires of hatred as she escorts him out of the apartment. Alfred and Jim gently pry Bruce away from Dev to let Leslie examine him, and when she looks up and says something, her words blur together but Jim gets the message.

Dev needs a hospital.

But Jim has a job to do.

So he climbs into Sarah’s passenger seat, still hazy, still shaking, and when the monster speaks again from the armored backseat, Jim turns around and barrages him with curses so cruel and abstract that he even manages to surprise himself. Even Sarah, who speaks barely any Gaelic, whistles and shakes her head as they drive to the station.

He doesn’t remember filling out the arrest paperwork, doesn’t remember Renee’s attempt to get him to talk about what the hell had happened, doesn’t remember much of anything except climbing into Sarah’s passenger seat that evening and sitting silently.

The sunlight is golden on the dashboard of her car. It’s fading behind the skyline.

Sarah takes his hand and rubs the back of it with her thumb. “Jamie?”

He looks at her, and when he sees the love, the concern, the fear written in her expression, he has to shake his head to ward off his sobs.

“Can we go?”

Sarah sighs gently and kisses the back of his hand. “Yeah. Let’s go home—”

“No,” Jim stops, struggles to reassemble himself, and puts his hands over his face. “Not home.”

“The Manor?”

Jim looks up at her. “Is that okay?”

Sarah squeezes his hand, starts the car, and peels out of the driveway heading north.

Heading toward his brothers.

=

There’s no patrol that night. When everyone finds out why, no one wants to go anymore.

Jim gets to the Manor and finds Dev asleep—not in that frightening fugue state, but actually asleep—with bandages wrapped thickly around his head. Tim is curled up beside him, his head in Dev’s lap; Bruce is hunched over his bedside, cluthching his hand. Everyone else in the family is there, even Kate is there, and when Jim walks in everyone looks up.

“What the hell happened?” Jason asks, his voice alight. Already, everything is too much.

Jim turns around, walks out of the room, down the stairs, sits on the bottom step, and sobs into his hands, the long day of pressure and agony finally fracturing him. 

He’s never been so angry, so filled with hatred for anyone, not since the Joker. 

Arms wrap around his shoulders, arms that he’s known for decades, arms that pulled a boy made of fire and kindness across the dark Gotham sky in Batman’s early days.

“Jim,” Dick says, softly, “Jim, he’s gonna be okay. It’s just a concussion. It’s pretty bad, but he’s gonna be okay.”

Jim hiccups. “I should’ve shot the motherfucker,” he croaks. “Should’ve shot him the second I laid eyes on him.”

“Maybe, but you didn’t. You did the right thing.”

“The right thing isn’t always the legal thing, Richard.”

Silence. Either Dick doens’t know how to respond to that or doesn’t want to. Instead he pulls Jim in closer, tighter, and holds him on the grand staircase, surrounded by lifeless things that breathe the same air they do, and they stay there.

Silence.

“It should’ve been me.”

Dick buries his face in his father-in-law’s shoulder. “Shut up.”

Jim does, but in his mind he repeats the phrase, as true as anything.

_It should’ve been me._

=

People sleep in shifts that night, if they even do sleep.

Jim and Bruce don’t. Bruce barely leaves Dev’s side, only rising a few times to catch Helena and tote her back to her room down the hall, back to the safety of sleep. Jim leaves only once: to get the spare guitar he keeps in the living room, because the silence and the guilt stuck in his chest is becoming too heavy to bear the weight on his own. He needs scaffolding to hold it over him, just for a moment; just for a moment, he needs to not be Atlas.

He sits in Dev’s room, the guitar in his lap, and tries to play something, anything, that will inspire hope, but in his mind’s eye all he sees is blood and empty eyes and raw knuckles.

There’s really only one song that he knows that can embody those feelings. It’s a song he wrote himself in his attic bedroom at the tender age of seventeen, seventeen years of hiding bruises under bandages and long sleeves and swallowing sobs when a friend slapped him on the back too hard.

Seventeen years.

He picks the strings with shaking hands.

_“You call yourself a hero_  
_You’re insane, you can’t see it_  
_You think you know what’s good for me_  
_Close your eyes, randomize,_  
_See it how I see it_

_You keep on breaking me down_  
_You’re a liar, you’re a fool,_  
_You tell me it’s what’s best for me_  
_I’m a mistake, the papers say,_  
_I’m nothing but your tool_

_And I don’t know_  
_What I did to deserve_  
_My feeble place_  
_In this violent world _  
_Your hits are black_  
_Can’t wait till you fall,_  
_Now look what you’ve done,_  
_There’s blood in the halls…”_

It’s not a triumph, it’s not a battle cry, it’s not a celebration of rising up. It’s just a story, a tale of fact woven into music, the only thing Jim understands like the back of his own hand.

The song feels like relief, and when it’s over it hangs in the air; another human dewdrop, gathering and growing, waiting to fall and burst.

“Any requests?”

No one says anything at first, but of all people, Kate was not expected to offer her voice. She’s not a superb singer, but it’s good enough to follow the tune, good enough that Jim can play along and improvise harmonies as he goes. 

_“Imagine there’s no heaven,_  
_It’s easy if you try,_  
_No hell below us,_  
_Above us only sky…”_

They sing as a group, or alone, for hours. Jim’s fingertips scream with exhaustion, but he doesn’t stop, because this is the only thing saving them right now: the gilded hum of Autoheart’s “Agorophobia,” the growl of The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” the wail of Twenty-One Pilots’ “Addict With A Pen,” and the windswept whistle of Radical Face’s “Welcome Home, Son,” a song that makes Jim’s soul ache.

At four in the morning, in a lapse of silence, Bruce offers his voice acapella. The human dewdrop is almost full to bursting. 

_“Oh, look at all the lonely people,_  
_Oh, look at all the lonely people_

_Eleanor Rigby_  
_Picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been_  
_Lives in a dream_  
_Waits at the window_  
_Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door_  
_Who is it for?_

_All the lonely people,_  
_Where do they all come from?_  
_All the lonely people,_  
_Where do they all belong?”_

All the lonely people, Jim has learned, come from tragedy, from heroism, from sacrifice.

All the lonely people, Jim has learned, belong in the hearts of those they save.

=

The following day is one for the books: a Saturday plastered with a leaking sky and an oceanic thunderstorm. Still, despite their exhaustion and the shitty weather, Jim and Sarah head into the station to deal with the routine asshatery that comes with their jobs.

Gettiing through the day is easier said than done.

Sarah, for her part, is sharp and bitter. It’s how she is when she’s exhausted, and her added concerns about Dev only make things worse. She snaps at her detectives more than once, and the patrol officers and beat cops under her command look more terrified than enthused when they leave the squad room with their assignments.

Jim is the opposite: he is quiet, withdrawn, and cold. It’s not caused by exhaustion—no matter how tired he is, he still does his best to rouse and make headway among the officers. Today, his silence is unnerving, because the last time Jim went dormant at work was in the later stages of his recovery from Negli’s a year prior. Now, his officers eye him cautiously as he passes by, as if searching for a warning sign that he’ll keel over in a coughing fit or start to hemorrage from his eyes.

Honestly, that’d probably be less painful than this.

When the sun begins to sink behind the clouds, Jim gathers the other members of the core five—Sarah, Renee, Maggie, and Bullock—and calls up Harvey and Bruce in what he describes as “an emergency meeting.”

When they’re all there, assembled in Jim’s office with the door shut, Jim starts off with an explanation. 

“You all saw who Sarah and I booked and brought yesterday, I assume?”

“Just because we saw him doesn’t mean we know who he is,” Renee remarks. 

Jim inhales slowly through his nose. Sometimes he forgets that not everyone has that almost-sixth sense when it comes to that specific kind of danger. Trauma-induced responses are a fun time.

“Jim?” Maggie asks. “Who was it?”

“Dev’s father,” Bruce growls.

The room goes quiet. 

“What holding cell is he in,” Harvey asks finally as Maggie nonchalantly cracks her knuckles.

“There’s no use beating the shit out of him, Bruce and I did that yesterday.” 

“A second beating for a guy like that is always deserved,” Renee says.

“Then Dev should be the one to do it—” Bullock starts, but Jim cuts him off. 

“No. We’re not even going to suggest that. We need him _gone._ Out of here. Away from Dev so he can never get near him again.”

“Seems kind of extreme—” 

Jim’s palm slams against his desk as he shoots to his feet, white-hot rage ripping through him like the great olive spear that tore through Polyphemus’ eye. “_Fuck_ extreme, Harvey, he gave Dev a concussion so bad he couldn’t respond to his _own fucking name_ when we found him! Don’t fucking tell _me_ what extreme looks like—!”

Bruce has somehow come up behind him during his outcry, and his old, powerful hands settle on his shoulders and gently lower Jim back down into his seat. Jim sees the gesture for what it is, puts his hands over his face, and breathes out slowly through his mouth. When he looks up again, Bullock looks shocked, and so do Maggie and Sarah. But Harvey’s good eye is dark with understanding, and the stress lines on Renee’s forehead have sunk deeper.

“He’s not staying here,” Jim manages finally, his voice strained and thick with emotion. “He needs to be gone.”

Harvey nods sharply, and his hands come up to tie his dreads back a bit tighter. “I’ll talk to Moniba about getting a court-mandated return order for him. Once I explain the situation, I’m sure she’ll get the job done.”

“Won’t Dev want to press charges?” Maggie asks.

“Dev wants fuck-all to do with his father,” Bruce says sternly. “He’ll be happy to know he’s gone when he wakes up.”

“And if his father tries to go to the press about police brutality?” Renee adds, an eyebrow raised.

“I was off the clock, and Bruce is a civilian. We were stopping a home invasion. That’s all.”

It won’t be that simple, but for now they accept it for what it is.

=

When they get home from their impromptu meeting, the doors fly open, and Damian leans out into the rainy sheets. 

“He’s awake!”

They sprint inside and upstairs as fast as they can, down the hall to Dev’s room, but Damian stops them outside. It feels weird, having to look up at the youngest Wayne child these days.

“He’s thoroughly incapacitated,” he says, voice soft, “so go easy on him.”

The door opens, and they pace through. It’s dark—the shades are drawn tightly, and the lights are barely on—and soft voices flit about like birds in the rafters of a barn. Dev is propped up in bed, his head still wrapped, surrounded by blankets and his family; Tim is sitting on his left, reading out loud from a book, Jason on his right, hunched over a notebook in the weak light. Kate is in the corner, Steph’s head in her lap, sharing a pair of headphones; Duke has Helena tucked against his chest, sleeping soundly while he reads _The Trial and Death of Socrates_; Dick, Babs, and Mary are gathered in the armchair by the window, sleeping soundly. 

Dev turns toward the door and smiles; familiar, warm, bright as the summer sun.

“About bleedin’ time you lot got home,” he says, “I was gettin’ worried you lost your heads on the way.”

It’s so Dev, so casually, affectionately teasing, and Jim feels tears well up. A part of him had been so scared that Dev would see them and flinch away, would cast his eyes somewhere else, but no, he’s smiling, albeit weakly, at seeing them.

Jim laughs softly, because if he doesn’t he’ll cry. “Glad that you still have yours.”

“Please. Takes more’n one hit to take me out.”

“Thank God,” Bruce says, his voice wavering. “And thank God for a sixth sense.”

Dev laughs then, then winces. “Fuck a sixth sense, thank God for stubborn brothers.”

Jason casually unfolds himself from the bed and joins Sarah at the doorway. “I’m gonna go downstairs and help Al, Cass, and Selina with dinner. Gimme a shout if you guys need anything.”

“You sure, lad?” Bruce asks. “We’re not chasing you out—”

“B, I know,” Jason replies with a patient smile. “But they need help, and you guys need this.” And with that, he swings himself around the corner and out of sight. Sarah sends a fond gaze at his back as he goes. 

“You raised some damn good kids, Wayne,” she says, eyes gentle and love-worn around the edges.

“Hear, hear,” Dev chimes from the bed. Tim laughs a few times before rising to his feet and sneaking over to slump down next to Stephanie, who casually begins to play with the ends of his hair as Tim puts his headphones in. Damian sinks against the wall beside them, pulls his knees up to his chest, and closes his eyes just to listen.

Dev looks sidelong at his brothers. “For shite’s sake, if you’re so worried, what’re you keeping your distance for?”

It’s a good question, and Bruce doesn’t let it hang; he crosses the divide in a few steps, climbs into bed at Dev’s side, and wraps his arms around him. It’s so honest, so earnest and natural Jim feels jealous. Even after years around these people, who he loves with all his heart, so often he has to be pushed to make the first step for physical affection or lets the other person initiate it. Bruce had been that way for a while, but old age and decades of exhaustion had changed him, made him hungry enough to chase after it instead of waiting.

And Dev wraps him up and lets his chin bury itself in Bruce’s hair before he looks up at Jim. “You gonna come over here, mate, or you gonna stand there?”

_Why is he so nonchalant, after everything that happened?_

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he says finally, “just let me get my guitar.” 

Sarah follows him out into the hall, up the stairs to “their” room on the third floor, and waits.

“What?”

“You know what.”

Jim sighs as he sits on the edge of the bed, tuning the guitar by ear. “I’m fine, Sarah.”

She sits beside him, her eyes soft with the light from a distant star. “Jamie, this isn’t your fault, you understand me? You and Bruce, you guys _saved_ him. The only person who did him wrong is his father.”

Jim stares at the floor until she takes his face in her hands and turns it towards her. “Sweetheart, you’re his hero. He’s your brother. He loves you. It’ll be okay.”

Jim leans in to press his forehead against hers, letting his eyes fall closed. “You always know what to say.”

“And you always know what to do. Opposites attract.” She kisses the bridge of his nose. “Now go be with him.”

Jim smiles, slings his guitar over his shoulder, and heads downstairs again.The room seems darker when he comes back, thanks to the fading light outside, and the bodies in the room seem stiller. Maybe his daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter aren’t the only ones asleep anymore. 

“You guys still awake?” he whispers to the shapes in the bed as he slides into the chair on Dev’s right. 

“Yeah,” Dev says.

“Both of you?”

“Yes, James,” Bruce says quietly.

“Just making sure.” He strums a chord quietly. “Can I play something, Devvie, or does it hurt too much?”

“I could have a six-inch pipe through my chest and I’d say yes to you playing.”

“Kiran.”

“I’m _serious_.”

Bruce’s figure shifts closer to Dev. “You’re not allowed to get hurt. Not after that.”

Dev laughs weakly, an undercurrent of terror flowing just below the surface. “Jesus, what a shitstorm _that’s_ gonna be. Can’t wait for more angry phone calls and unexpected house calls at ten in the damn morning—”

“He’s not coming back,” Jim declares. 

Dev’s head shifts to look his way. “What?”

“I talked to DA Moniba Ashlan and ADA Ophelia Hammerman this evening. They want to put a restriction order on his record. No allowance into the country, no receiving phone calls, no contact with you or anything that could enable his contacting you whatsoever.” He plucks two strings absently. “I know what he did to you, Devvie. I never want you to have to look at him again, if I can help it.”

There’s no answer for a long time.

“James?”

“Yeah?”

“Pull your bloody chair closer or so help me.”

Jim does, and he takes Dev’s outstretched hand and squeezes it tight. “_Is brea liom tu_, kiddo.”

Dev makes a sound, and Jim can’t tell if it’s a huff of laughter or a supressed sob. “I still have no bleedin’ idea what that means.” 

“Yeah, you do.”

“Just play your damn guitar, you wanker, and I promise I don’t.”

Jim lifts Dev’s hand, kisses his knuckles, and places it gently onto the bed. “Anything in mind?”

“Whatever you want.”

Jim leans over to the dial for the lamp. “Can I turn this up just to see the strings?”

“Yeah, mate, go for it.”

The light is soft and golden, an orb of homemade sunlight, and Jim begins to pluck the strings and finger the frets with well-practiced, well-loved tenderness. It’s a song they have adored, one that has been reprised time and time again in their family circle.

_“I have made mistakes,_  
_I have made mistakes,_  
_I continue to make them…_  
_And the promises I’ve made,_  
_The promises I’ve made,_  
_I continue to break them…”_

Out of the corner of his eye, Jim sees Stephanie and Kate pull their headphones out and sit up, and Helena stirs in Duke’s lap at the same time Mary and Dick raise their heads from where they’re nestled against Babs, whose eyes are soft even in the dim light, and Tim closes his book and watches Jim, his head on top of his folded arms. Damian has not moved, but his eyes are open and staring intently, like he can see the notes unfurling in the air.

_“And all the doubts I’ve faced,_  
_All the doubts I’ve faced,_  
_I continue to face them…_  
_But nothing is a waste,_  
_Nothing is a waste_  
_If you learn from it…”_

By now, Bruce has straightened up, and Dev is leaning his head against his shoulder. They both look soft, at peace; Jim can see the tears standing in Dev’s eyes, but the smile on his face is like a hearth fire in December.

There are five silhouettes in the doorway. Jim sucks back a stiff sob of relief, of gratitude.

_“And the sun, it does not cause us_  
_The sun, it does not cause us to grow…_  
_It is the rain that will strengthen,_  
_The rain that will strengthen your soul,_  
_It will make you whole…”_

And as he raises his voice, Stephanie, Jason, and Bruce offer theirs in partnership, a flowering harmony that makes Jim’s skin break into goosebumps; Tim thumps his fist against the floorboards to make a beat; Babs rattles her keychain in a makeshift tambourine. When the next verse begins, Stephanie sings a bit louder in a shaky, soaring duet.

_“We have lived in fear,_  
_We have lived in fear _  
_And our fear has betrayed us…_  
_But we will overcome_  
_We will overcome_  
_The apathy that has made us…”_

“Bloody talented bastards, it’s right fucking annoying,” Dev says, and Cass and Selina laugh from the doorway. Even Jim can’t supress a smile at that.

_“Cause we are not alone,_  
_We are not alone_  
_In the dark with our demons…_  
_And we have made mistakes,_  
_We have made mistakes_  
_But we’ve learned from them…”_

Sarah walks around the bed, comes behind Jim, drapes her arms around his neck and lets her head rest on his shoulder. And now the whole family offers their voices now, whether in unison or a hastily-made harmony, all except Dev. Dev, his brother the alchemist; Bruce, his brother the knight. He feels lowly standing beside them, yet here they are, letting him in.

There’s so much left to fix. Dev’s father still must be sent home, charges will be sent internationally, the vultures will descend, Dev still has to recover.

But for now, they have this. 

Dev is safe, they’re all safe, and they have this orb of homemade sunlight and the tossing storm and the music.

_“And the sun, it does not cause us,_  
_The sun, it does not cause us to grow,_  
_It is the rain that will strengthen_  
_The rain that will strengthen your soul,_  
_It will make you whole…”_

For now, they have this.

They’ll be alright.

_Dev_ will be alright.


End file.
